Inaugural Dragon Award winners named

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I guess we're talking Safehold for Weber? Not a series I've read, since it sounds like the bits I didn't like about the Honor Harrington books writ large. I did enjoy the HH books (not that different to Temeraire, when you get down to it, both owing a big debt to CS Forester), but again they went downhill after a while and I'm several behind.

Yes, the Safehold series. I have read all of the HH series and I have been buying the anniversary special editions as they come out. I agree that the HH series is of lighter weight than the Safehold series, but HH is among my most favorite books. I've wondered why it hasn't been made into a TV/movie series yet. It has a very strong female lead character who also has a strong "feminine" side. In fact, she is much like Katniss in The Hunger Games as played by Jennifer Lawrence although with less emotion.

I found the HH series to be much better than Novik's Temeraire series. The characters in HH are far less wooden and far more interesting. They have much more depth. Novik's characters are about as bland as tapwater. I keep hoping Weber will return to HH and add another dozen or so books. I even enjoy some of the offshoot series, such as the Manticore series, to be very good and I preorder just about anything he is listed as an author of.

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I have the first-in-series by Beaulieu and Tahir, but haven't got around to reading them yet. Nice to hear positive word about them.

I just received the second book in Tahir's series. I am anxious to get to it, but I need to finish the 3 other books I am currently reading.

I have Beaulieu's next book on preorder.

[auspex]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

If participation and coverage of the awards are limited to Puppies circles, can you really say that they gamed by a clique?

It's not their fault that everyone else defaulted.

Did they? No mention of that on the blogs I've read. Instead, we have Freer making a racist allegory of what's happening at the Hugos and saying "I predict next year we'll have carpet sellers". Looks to me like they ARE the carpet sellers.

[radius]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

As usual, I don't particularly care who wins awards. But the nomination list looks pretty solid and legit to me. Weber, Freer, Correia, Novik, Butcher, Sir Terry Pratchet (spoiler: he won his category), plus HBO, BETHESDA SOFTWORKS... a couple Indies, and even an Amazon Publishing title. Sounds pretty inclusive to
me.

I think it depends what you mean by "legit". To me, it seems like this list is obviously designed to give awards to authors that are liked by the various puppies (do they really need all those separate categories to tag on "military"?), and it doesn't look to me like they are weighing literary merit very heavily. On the other hand, most of the nominations are works that have a good reputation among wider fandom so they are probably "legit" in the sense of representing a more populist take on what is award-worthy.

I'm happy they've done this though, and I think it's what they should have considered all along instead of trying to game and then destroy the Hugos.

[Lemurion]

I have to admit to a soft spot for the Dragons if only because my brother's part of Chaosium and they won best RPG.

As for the fiction awards, I'm torn. Politically I'm a liberal, but I've always loved Sad Puppies style conservative science fiction. At the same time, I can't stand Vox Day or the Rabid Puppies. I also tend to think that while many of the last few years' Hugo winners haven't been to my taste, they do have more literary merit (IMHO) than the books I like better.

In the end I think I'll simply avoid anything from Castalia House and hope they don't poison the well in future.